


Girls are from Mars

by hikachu



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 10:37:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikachu/pseuds/hikachu
Summary: Hijikata Tenko is in love. Purely out of the kindness of her heart, Ginko decides she's gonna teach hopeless Tenko how to seduce a man. Meaning, she might need to explain to Tenko just how awful men can be.





	1. Obligatory Vague First Person Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diopan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/gifts).



> For the love of my life: happy birthday! I can't wait to see you and be with you again cutest!!

Don’t go ranting off to me about love.

What’s so great about giving up on your own happiness for the sake of someone else’s?

It’s like everyone but me is in on some ridiculous inside joke, and then they have the nerve to give me the stink eye if I say I don’t get it. Like I’m some heartless subhuman. Hah.

My theory, you see, is that it’s all a trick, a ploy by and for masochists to get off without being labelled perverts by society. Instead, they get to be ‘self-sacrificing’, ‘altruistic’, ‘pure’. While I get to be the heartless subhuman!

How wonderful. How unfair.

All because Gin-san is no masochist!

If there’s gotta be pain involved in this weird mess of hormones and mindless longing, I’d much rather be the one inflicting it.

Why should I be the one bending over and letting someone else walk all over me? No fun in that for me--but that’s exactly why I can make it fun for someone else while I enjoy myself. A win-win situation, no?

And yet some of you losers still have the nerve to nag at me. Blah blah blah.

Whenever I remember Micchan’s face, that day after school, as she she said, as long as she’s happy I’ll be happy too, I shudder.

Micchan is a sweet, kind girl and I like her well enough, make no mistake, but--she’s such a liar.

‘As long as she’s happy’ is what she said as she played the role of the brave, selfless heroine, yet Micchan couldn’t even look me in the eye.

What an awful performance. I’ll give you 6/10 because I know you tried so hard, Micchan, and because I’m a very generous person.

So generous, in fact, that when you whispered, please help her, in that bird-like voice of yours, I couldn’t find it in my big heart to refuse.

Even though I reminded myself your request was the sort of crap I hated, even though I wanted to yell that you were selling yourself short, going after that pig-woman of all people, I gave in and said, sure.

Maybe I pitied you.

Maybe, some vain part of me wanted to prove I was capable of selflessness too.

In any case, I believe now, that was the beginning of the end.

Little Kagura is right: I am such an idiot.


	2. How it actually began

Hijikata Tenko is fat.

Her little nose and little mouth stand squeezed between two very full cheeks.

She has a double chin, a prominent stomach and huge thighs that make her look especially round. Like an egg or a daruma wrapped in human clothes.

Hijikata Tenko is not vain and doesn't care enough to notice or believe that her eyelashes are unusually long and curved, that her small nose and small mouth are pretty and she could be so beautiful, oh if only she would lose all that excess weight.

Ginko has known her for years now and the only times she thinks of Tenko as fat--the only times when that registers as essential rather than one of many descriptors, are those when they're fighting, or Ginko is bored and Tenko is an easy target: in keeping a distance from others all her life, proper, tough and untouchable Tenko has never learned to protect herself from insignificant everyday cruelties. In places, her skin is paper thin.

It’s a secret not even Tenko herself knows, and at times, it makes Ginko giddy--knowing that, possibly, she’s the only one who has noticed.

She’s holding her unsuspecting, sworn enemy’s life in her hands, after all.

One morning, as they walk to school, Ginko spies red on Tenko’s cheeks and suspects it’s not entirely due to the cold weather because the silence between them is awkward and foreign. It makes her dread whatever Tenko is about to say--or hide.

She’s about to spit out something inflammatory to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling and to save what has been their normalcy until now, when Tenko opens her damn small mouth and ruins everything.

“I like someone,” she mutters like she’s ashamed, and it’s so uncharacteristic of her that Ginko’s first thought is, as you should. Be ashamed that you’re ashamed in the first place, dumbass.

“Huh? Where didja meet another talking pig in the middle of Tokyo?”

“It's a human! Of course I’m talking about a human, you idiot! Why are you always so--”

Ginko doesn't care to hear the rest. Instead, she studies how Tenko’s features scrunch up together in anger: it's ugly in an oddly endearing sort of way way.

Her blushing cheeks remind Ginko of ripe peaches in early summer. Soft and dark pink.

“Oi stop yelling,” she deadpans after a while. “When you puff your cheeks out like that, they look like asscheeks. Haha. Buttface!”

They complete the last leg of their trek to school running, Tenko chasing after Ginko.

 

After class, Ginko, proud member of the go home club, is thinking of the parfait she’ll eat on the way back, when Mitsuba, popular member of the sewing club, catches the hem of her sleeve with her fingers.

“Oh, if it isn't Micchan. What can I do for the school Madonna?”

Mitsuba, doesn't startle, blush or protest. Ginko feels the annoyance creep in. What’s wrong with everyone today, she wonders.

“Sorry to bother you, Ginko-san. It’s about Tenko-san.”

The same dread from the morning settles in her stomach. “What about her.” 

Oh, Gin-san, good ol’ Gin-san, when will you stop being right, she thinks, bitter, when Mitsuba says: it’s about the person she likes. It’s a crime that someone so beautiful, and so young still, would be this smart as well. Really.

“How’s that any of my business? If the sow is in heat and that somehow concerns you then you should talk to her.”

Mitsuba covers her face with her hands and sobs.

“Huh? What? Please don’t cry!” _Ah, if anyone sees, this time I’ll be lynched for sure!_ “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, here, this is still clean on this side so you can use it!” 

Ginko watches apprehensively as Mitsuba takes the handkerchief from her, and for a moment pictures Shouyo’s cold smile if he knew it had been sitting, dirty and crumpled, in the depths of her pocket for a week now.

Mitsuba whispers a strained thank you, studying the piece of cloth between her hands like it holds the key to whatever has her so unsettled.

Or, perhaps, she’s just judging Ginko for carrying around a dirty handkerchief. The quiet ones, it’s always the quiet ones.

“They’re both incredibly important people to me, and I want them to be happy together if possible.”

Maybe, Ginko decides, it’s simply that Mitsuba doesn’t want her to see her expression right now.

“I thought,” she says slowly, “you liked that pig.”

Finally, Mitsuba looks up. She’s crying. Of course she would be.

“That is why I can’t ignore her feelings,” she says like Ginko can understand or wants to.

Ginko’s face contracts in an expression of disgust and disbelief.

Mitsuba smiles. It’s open and sweet.

“I’m a fool, aren’t I?”

Ginko looks at her puffy red eyes, the sticky tracks left behind by the tears on their way to her chin. She looks at her smile and waits for it to falter or die out like a broken lightbulb but it doesn’t, and that, too, is very much like Micchan.

Looking up at the sky, Ginko pats her head.

“You’re too cute for someone who was bawling her eyes out just now. It’s unfair.”


End file.
